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Written in fRoots issue 317/318, 2009
 

VARIOUS
Aiguallum – Veus De La Diversitat
PEC Manresa AIGUALLUM-09 (2009)

Manresa is a small industrial inland Catalan city about 50 Km north of Barcelona. It has a population of only about 77,000, yet during its big Mediterrània festival of Mediterranean roots music and arts it comes up with plenty of good indoor and outdoor venues, and its multicultural inhabitants with local government support have made this remarkable CD.
      Guitarist, producer and former artistic director of the festival Tony Xuclà has gathered twenty-one local non-professional performers, mainly singers, whose origins are in twenty-one countries, and put together a track with each of them. Bringing in a team of extraordinarily capable musicians he surrounds each performer and brings out their best with beautifully crafted studio arrangements using forms and instruments that suit their music so well one would assume each track is made in, and probably a significant release from, the singer’s country of origin.
      The album, which comes in a finely-produced hardback book with for each singer a double page with the lyrics in the original language and Catalan, biography and photo, is sequenced by the geographical region of their origin, beginning in Mordva, Ukraine, Armenia, Romania, Moldova and Russia, moving to Africa’s Mozambique, Gambia, Senegal, Morocco and Sidi Ifni, then via the UK, USA, Denmark, Italy and Switzerland to Mexico, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic and Argentina, ending with China. Between each region is a relevant instrumental interlude.
      The instrumental range of sounds and traditions is extraordinary. To pick just a few, on the opening, Mordvin track, Juan Aguiar plays just-right wiggly violin with a splendidly edgy, wheezing band. Lusik Bazeyan’s Armenian vocal is backed by duduk, kaval, accordion, saz, guitar, bass and percussion, the Moldovan track has a bouncing brass and reeds combo, the Russian a limpid string arrangement, a skittering Mozambiquan-style guitars and brass band, there’s balafon, a Dominican skipping diatonic accordion and guitar shuffle, and for Marta Yasmin Gonzalez’s Mexican ranchera song Frances Tomas ‘Panxito’ creates all by himself a full and convincing Mexican band of guitarra huapangera, vihuela de Michaocán, harp, viola and guitarrón.
      I was preparing for a cultural cringe with The Water Is Wide, the contribution by High Wycombe born Helen Mosses, but no need; she turns out to be a gutsy and very able black R&B style singer, with an elegantly produced accompaniment from acoustic guitar, keyboards, bass, percussion and Toni Xuclà on lyrically soloing tin whistle.
      What on the face of it might have been a worthy but perhaps scrappy civic project emerges as not just a great thing to have done, a lot of painstaking work and a triumph of Xuclà’s arranging and production, but a genuinely good listen all the way through. Now, if with a population of just 77,000 Manresa can do that…

pec@ajmanresa.cat


© 2009 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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